I’ll do this. Now the next thing. Ok. What’s going on with email… Gotta respond here. But I need this first…

Some days there’s no room for air. You dive in and just go. Bopping from one thing to the next with an intuitive sense of what the next most important thing is, you just do it.

It’s a reactive mode that seems to move things forward. And sometimes things truly do move forward.

But there’s a thin line. An extra text, email, call, message, or a passerby who says, “Hey, do you got a minute?” can lead to a stumble.

Somewhere an engaging juggling act shifts into a bombardment. Consciously or unconsciously, things start slipping through the cracks.

As we get ourselves up again, we struggle between making our own decisions or maybe even recognize that these things have been making decisions for us.

One of the most vital and difficult practices to remember is to Pause. While a moment to gather our thoughts can feel like a luxury, so is water to someone in the desert.

Further, pausing is only the first step. Beyond the pause, we need to consider:

1. What is on mind right now?
2. What options do I have this moment?
3. What single option would I like to move forward with now?

The Waves of Focus Methodology blends these practices into a powerful, pen and paper technique called “Anchoring”. You can watch a quick version of the Anchor Technique here:

In short, it is about pausing, reflecting on the options you have available to you now, and then deliberately choosing one with which to move forward.

It sounds simple and hardly worth a look. But the transformation I hear from so many students says it is anything but. Creatives, those with ADHD, and other wandering minds in general have often found it to make a massive difference.

– Kourosh

PS If you’re interested in starting small, rather than diving into the Waves of Focus, consider Being Productive: Simple Steps to Calm Focus, which presents a robust overview of a working system that you can adapt to any tool you’d like.